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In light of mounting controversy over the announcement to relocate the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology, Government has since put the move on hold.This was disclosed by Education Minister, Dr Rupert Roopnarine on Wednesday. The Minister was at the time engaging indigenous leaders at the National Toshaos Council (NTC) Conference, which is being held at the Arthur Chung International Convention Centre, and was questioned about the relocation of the museum.The current location of the Walter Roth MuseumTwo weeks ago, Guyana Times broke the news of plans afoot to relocate the museum, which was subsequently confirmed by the Ministry of the Presidency, which said it would be moving the museum and its employees to the National Museum by the end of the year. The relocation was to facilitate the housing of a department of the Ministry at the Museum’s current Main Street location.This decision did not sit well with various sections of Guyanese society as criticisms mounted against Government for not holding any consultations on its decision to relocate the museum, which is the oldest museum of anthropology in the English-speaking Caribbean.However, Dr Roopnarine on Wednesday gave assurance that no decisions will be made to move the historical museum until consultations were held with museum staff and stakeholders, including the leaders of the 212 indigenous villages.“What I have done is I have asked the President (David Granger) to put the question of the movement of the Walter Roth Museum on hold until I have had an opportunity to discuss the matter more thoroughly with the people, the anthropologists, the Toshaos and so on,” Minister Roopnaraine informed the gathering at the Convention Centre.This announcement was met with resounding applause from the indigenous leaders. The Minister further indicated to the indigenous leaders that the matter was one that was at the heart of his very own family.During the engagement on the third day of the NTC, Toshao of Maruranau Village in Region Nine, Patrick Gomes decried the Government’s decision to move the museum, on the grounds that the artefacts contained within were those discovered several hundred years ago and many may not survive relocation.Gomes called on all the indigenous leaders present at the NTC to make a recommendation to the Government that the museum remains at its present site, “because we do not want to lose our heritage and our connection to the past”.He added that the indigenous people needed to “have that connection to the past, to know where we came from, where we are going and what we have”.The Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology contains a wealth of historic information and artefacts about the Amerindian people with the aim of keeping the legacy of Guyana’s first people alive.The museum was founded with the collections of Guyanese archaeologist, Dr Denis Williams and in 1980, the ethnographic collections of Dr Walter Roth, Mr J J Quelch and Sir Everardim Thurn were transferred to the museum from the National Museum. The museum’s collections also include dug-up artefacts from all 10 administrative regions.In addition to condemnation from the likes of former Ministers of Culture, Youth and Sport, Dr Frank Anthony and Gail Teixeira among others, there has been an online petition to stop the relocation of the historical facility with over 500 signatures gathered.read more

SAN JOSE — Before we dive into the Erik Karlsson stuff, let’s give some props to Joe Pavelski.Captain Clutch came through in crunch time again Saturday, jumping on Timo Meier’s rebound in the slot and burying it at 13:06 of the third to clinch two points for the Sharks on a night when the Vancouver Canucks controlled much of the play.The goal came after Pavelski pressured Alex Biega into turning the puck over in his own zone, setting the stage for his heroics later in the shift. Pavelski also …read more

OAKLAND – Can the Warriors come back? That’s become a familiar and jarring question as they’ve trailed by double digits for six consecutive games.That comeback curiosity now goes for the Warriors’ three-peat hopes in the NBA Finals.As much as injury woes are impacting this two-time title defense, the Warriors constantly find themselves in need of a rally.They’ve trailed by 17, 18, 17, 12, 12 and 17 dating back to Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals against Portland. And, yet, they are …read more

(Image: Wikipedia)New laws should be in place in Europe by the end of 2010 obliging timber importers to ensure the wood they buy has been legally produced – and Ghana will become the first exporting country to be able to offer such a guarantee.The timber trade is a huge business. In Cameroon, where timber exports rank second only to oil in value, it is worth more than US$700-million a year. Indonesia earns nearly $3-billion a year from wood and wood products, but Greenpeace says that as much of 80% of the logging in Indonesia is illegal.It is more than seven years since the European Union adopted a Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (Flegt, PDF, 1 MB) action plan. Negotiations have been grinding on ever since, both in Brussels, and between the EU and supplier countries. But last week an update meeting in London heard that a compromise text of the new legislation had been drafted and would probably be adopted by the end of the year.The key element is an obligation for importers to show “due diligence” – to prove that they have taken all reasonable care to ensure they are not buying illegal timber. What is or is not legal will be left to the producing countries; if the timber is produced according to local laws and regulations, the EU will accept it.And since the importers can hardly be expected to go and poke about in tropical forests themselves to see where their wood is coming from, the EU is negotiating VPAs – voluntary partnership agreements – with its traditional suppliers.Ghana was the first country to sign and ratify a VPA. By the beginning of next year it should be selling licensed timber under Flegt. Any importer who buys it will automatically be considered to have fulfilled the due diligence obligation.Pilots for the new Flegt assurance scheme have already started in Ghana, with inspectors out in the forest armed with tags and handheld GPS and barcode scanners.Patrick Newton, who is developing the necessary software for a company called Helveta, described how bar-coded tags would be put on standing trees, and more would go on the logs cut from those trees. Between the sawmill and the ship, consignments would be reconciled by volume and by species, and the system would then generate a Flegt-compliant export licence.“The buyer will be able to look all the way up the supply chain from the point of export,” Newton told the meeting, “all the way back up the chain to the forest where that timber came from.”Kingsley Bekoe, a forestry specialist with Ghanaian NGO Civic Response, stressed how important the agreement is to the country: “Almost 60% of our timber exports are to the EU market. If you don’t sign this agreement, I guess you will increasingly lose out.“The market is starting to ask for legal timber. It’s Europe and also the US but other markets are getting increasingly interested in this. So if you don’t enter that agreement you will gradually be losing your market share.”With Ghana, Cameroon and the Republic of Congo were in the first group to sign up. Negotiations are ongoing with Malawi, Indonesia, Liberia and the Central African Republic. Gabon, the DR Congo and Vietnam have asked to start the process.Each agreement will be different. Any VPA with Vietnam, for instance, will have to take into account the fact that it imports most of its timber and makes furniture to sell to the EU and Japan.“There’s no blueprint,” Matthieu Bousquet of the European Commission told the meeting. “No hard and fast rules, no absolute recipe.”Illegal logging fearsBut John Palmer of the Forest Management Trust was critical: “These agreements are now moving into states where the law is little understood,” he told the meeting.“And as you demand more and more documentation, you will get any kind of documentation you are prepared to pay for. It’s a simplistic assumption that everyone is basically working in the same direction. Illegal logging is hugely profitable; there’s a lot of money involved.”London-based campaign group Global Witness agrees. “This can curb illegal logging to a certain extent,” said its forestry expert, Reiner Tegtmeyer. “But only when the structures are in place to be sure that the certificates issued are not just paper. We have always said that independent monitoring is essential.”Illegal logging has been a source of funds for conflict and destabilisation, most notoriously during Liberia’s civil war. With Charles Taylor’s rebels in control of the densely wooded southeast of the country and the port of Buchanan, timber was one of their main sources of income.After Taylor became president, he continued to divert timber revenues for his own purposes – Global Witness believes that by 2000 around $100-million a year was unaccounted for. Because of fears that it was being used to fund conflicts elsewhere in the region, the UN imposed sanctions on the country’s timber exports.Those sanctions have now been lifted, but Liberia is struggling to re-establish its logging industry. Victoria Cole of the country’s Forest Development Authority says she is worried the Flegt process is being pushed ahead too fast, and that her country does not have the capacity to implement it.“If I show you a piece of wood,” she said, “and say this bit of wood is legal, then what makes it legal? People have to understand.”In Liberia, legality would mean that the concession had been awarded by competitive bidding, that the company treats its workers fairly and fulfils its obligation to the local community, that it only cuts mature trees and does not exceed its quota and that it has paid all its taxes.But she likes the fact that the EU will base its standard of legality on Liberia’s own laws. “We are the ones to determine it,” she says. “No one is going to determine it for us.”Source: Irin Newsread more

I’m just returning from another really great year at SXSW. It’s always fun to meet up with so many new and old friends in just a few days in Austin. Beyond that, one of my favorite things is bumping into so many entrepreneurs I’ve never met who are working on interesting problems. However, this year I met a concerning number of entrepreneurs who wouldn’t tell me anything about their business. They explained they were building it “stealth”. I fear this has become the default course of action for far too many startups and in many cases it’s not the best plan. Interestingly, very active angel and COO at Square, Keith Rabois weighted in on Quora in response to the question: “What are some concrete reasons for *actively* stealthing a startup?” last year. His answer: With respect to the consumer Internet world, there are almost no valid reasons.The best legitimate rationale applies only to a very small set of previously successful entrepreneurs who are “famous” and are attacking a market that is not intuitively massive. They might want to avoid signaling that the market opportunity merits a closer inspection until they are ready to launch. My friend Charlie O’Donnell (currently a principal at First Round Capital) coined the term “anti-stealth”. As I’ve thought about it, I think there are three big advantages to going anti-stealth and would encourage any entrepreneur to consider them: Leveraging product feedback earlier in development Building a reputation and community in your target market Building relationships with potential investors pre-fundraising Leveraging Product Feedback Earlier Over the last seven years, before joining ReadWriteWeb as COO, I started two companies (sold to Morgan Stanley and LinkedIn). They both required a tremendous amount of capital and time before we were able to get a product into the market. As has been widely covered, companies are far more capital-efficient today and you can release a product into the market extremely early. Eric Reis has covered the implications around this extensively and described these new ventures as “lean startups.” One of the key principals of going lean is to get meaningful customer feedback as quickly as possible often by developing a minimally viable product.In some cases you don’t even have to build a product but can create a landing page and run some Adsense ads to promote the concept. Then you measure to see how many sign up and recruit their friends/colleagues. It allows you to see if there is demand for the product – and avoid the killer realization later that you’ve built something no one wants. Building Reputation and Community in Target Market Related to testing product demand, you also can develop a reputation in a given market by talking about what you’re working on. We’ve talked in the past about different types of startup blogs on ReadWriteStart but the key point here is you can start blogging to build an early community.Being active on social platforms as early as possible in your startup’s life will help you gather valuable feedback and early users. In an enterprise sales context, I’ve also seen this have the effect of what I call “proof by repeated assertion” where you seem more credible as a vendor to an enterprise client because you have been telling them you’ll solve their problem in many earlier interactions. Building Relationships with Potential Investors Pre-Fundraising Obviously there are different schools of thought on the best way to raise a venture round. However, I don’t know anyone who would argue that investors don’t care about your ability to make progress efficiently. Therefore, to the extent it doesn’t slow you down, being up-front with what you are working on and its progress provides a clear history. More importantly, you make your startup much more discoverable. You also make it obvious why an investor should be interested when you’re referenced by a trusted colleague or simply a Google search that turns up your site. This becomes more important as deal-flow gets more and more competitive and investors try to proactively discover these startups. I continue to be shocked how competitive this is becoming. Earlier this month, TechCrunch covered a new program by Google Ventures to basically turn all 25,000 Google employees into scouts for deal-flow. Specifically the story states: If you’re a Google employee and you know about a stealth startup that wants funding, you can pocket a cool $10,000. The Google Ventures team announced the new program at Google’s weekly all-hands “TGIF” meeting, earlier this afternoon. As firms continue to search for new deals from unusual sources, I think the best thing entrepreneurs can do is make sure they tell the story well when a prospective investor shows up. Saying you are a “stealth” company with no details certainly doesn’t leave much to go on. Conclusion To be clear, I realize there are companies that need to build their startup in stealth mode (such as for famous entrepreneurs like Keith points out above). However, I think it’s also important to recognize that often the benefits of running your company in anti-stealth mode far outweigh those benefits and should be thoroughly explored before just choosing stealth by default. Not convinced yet? Check out this video from one of this year’s SxSW keynotes: Reid Hoffman sharing his thoughts on data as well as 10 tips for entreprenuership. The whole video is worth watching but if you are pressed for time check out tip number six on releasing your product so early you are embarassed by it. It starts at 29:11. There is a great anecdote about a feature his co-founders felt they couldn’t launch without including in LinkedIn – it still isn’t included eight years and 100 million members later.What do you think? Let us know in the comments where you come out on the stealth vs. anti-stealth continuum. And if I bump into you next year at SxSW or at another event (like our upcoming ReadWriteWeb 2Way Summit) please tell me a little about what you do! Why Tech Companies Need Simpler Terms of Servic… sean ammirati 8 Best WordPress Hosting Solutions on the Market A Web Developer’s New Best Friend is the AI Wai… Related Posts Tags:#start#startups Top Reasons to Go With Managed WordPress Hostingread more

It is difficult for salespeople to command their prospective client’s time. This is a symptom; it is not the disease. This means that the things that you might do to alleviate the symptom are not likely a cure. The cure would have to eliminate the disease.Using brute force to gain an appointment by banging away on someone using the telephone or email is one way to try to overcome the symptoms and gain the commitment of time. Automating those communications only moves the brute force approach to technology while the underlying illness is not addressed. Granted, this sometimes works, but don’t let that allow you to pretend that you addressed the underlying problem. It has done no such thing.Some people recommend taking a more passive view of prospecting, and so believe that the cure is to hang around on social media, interacting and engaging with people in hopes of someone raising their hand and asking you for a meeting. Many who recommend this as the cure have no idea how much more difficult and time-consuming content marketing is when compared to more traditional approaches. They also mistakenly believe that salespeople are content creators and are permitted to post public content in the same way that a person who works for themselves. These folks think that fishing is a better approach than hunting, even though the pond is understocked and overcrowded. This, too, leaves the disease alone to fester.To treat the disease, you must have something of greater value than the time you are asking your dream client to give you, you must have something so valuable that your dream client would literally pay you for their time, as that is what they are really doing. If your 20-minute meeting doesn’t cause your dream client to discover something about themselves, something that is worth 1,000 times more than the time they gave you, then they are right to refuse your meeting.Look at the first eight slides in your slide deck. If your marketing firm loves it because it tells your story, you are riddled with this disease, and you should immediately seek help.Learn more on Trading Value in The Lost Art of Closing. Essential Reading! Get my first book: The Only Sale Guide You’ll Ever Need “The USA Today bestseller by the star sales speaker and author of The Sales Blog that reveals how all salespeople can attain huge sales success through strategies backed by extensive research and experience.” Buy Nowread more

Portland Trail Blazers Damian Lillard, right, scores past Toronto Raptors Serge Ibaka, center, during the first half of an NBA basketball game Friday, Feb. 2, 2018, in Toronto. (Chris Young/The Canadian Press via AP)TORONTO — DeMar DeRozan scored 35 points, Jonas Valanciunas had 18 and the Toronto Raptors beat Portland 130-105 on Friday night, their sixth straight win over the Trail Blazers.Fred VanVleet scored 16 points, Kyle Lowry had 15 and Pascal Siakam 13 as the Raptors improved their home record to 20-4, the best mark in the NBA.ADVERTISEMENT Trending Articles PLAY LIST 00:50Trending Articles01:43Who are Filipinos rooting for in the NBA Finals?02:25Raptors or Warriors? PBA players take their pick of NBA champ01:29Police teams find crossbows, bows in HK university01:35Panelo suggests discounted SEA Games tickets for students02:49Robredo: True leaders perform well despite having ‘uninspiring’ boss02:42PH underwater hockey team aims to make waves in SEA Games01:44Philippines marks anniversary of massacre with calls for justice01:19Fire erupts in Barangay Tatalon in Quezon City AFP official booed out of forum Read Next NEXT BLOCK ASIA 2.0 introduces GURUS AWARDS to recognize and reward industry influencers LATEST STORIES Typhoon Kammuri accelerates, gains strength en route to PH Brace for potentially devastating typhoon approaching PH – NDRRMC DeRozan made 11 of 22 shots and matched his career-high by making six 3-pointers. He finished 6 for 10 from long range.The Raptors made a season high 19 3-pointers. Toronto shot 19 for 40 from behind the arc, with nine players making at least one 3-pointer.FEATURED STORIESSPORTSWATCH: Drones light up sky in final leg of SEA Games torch runSPORTSLillard, Anthony lead Blazers over ThunderSPORTSMalditas save PH from shutoutDamian Lillard scored 32 points, becoming the fastest player in franchise history to reach 10,000 for his career, but Portland’s four-game winning streak was snapped. The Blazers have lost five of their past seven on the road.CJ McCollum scored 21 points and Jusuf Nurkic had 20, but no other Portland player had more than five through the first three quarters. Slow and steady hope for near-extinct Bangladesh tortoises Don’t miss out on the latest news and information. MOST READ John Lloyd Cruz a dashing guest at Vhong Navarro’s wedding 2 ‘newbie’ drug pushers fall in Lucena sting Globe Business launches leading cloud-enabled and hardware-agnostic conferencing platform in PH After winning an NBA-high 11 games in January, the Blazers opened their February schedule on a losing note.Lillard came in 12 points away from 10,000. He reached the milestone on a driving layup with 45 seconds left in the first quarter, then passed it with a 3 at 9:06 of the second.DeRozan scored 16 points and Valanciunas had 11 as the Raptors led 37-18 after one. Lillard was the only Portland player to deliver offensively in the opening quarter, scoring 12 points and making 4 of 5 shots. The rest of the Blazers combined to shoot 2 for 13.Nurkic scored 13 points in the second and McCollum had 11 but DeRozan added 10 more for the Raptors, who made seven 3-pointers in the quarter and led 74-52 at halftime.Toronto led 101-80 heading to the fourth.ADVERTISEMENT Kemba’s 41, fast start help Hornets beat Pacers 133-126 View commentsread more

Rattled by the doping scandal that has rocked Indian athletics, the Sports Ministry is planning to bring a new law to deal with the menace in the forthcoming Monsoon Session of Parliament.”We are going to the Cabinet in this regard and wish to bring a specific law on doping in the Monsoon Session of Parliament,” said Minister for Sports and Youth Affairs Ajay Maken, on the sidelines of a workshop on population held at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi on Monday.”We also want that the WADA norms be applicable to all sports. In case the norms or international sports bodies are different from those of WADA, or are in conflict, then the norms of international sports bodies would be applicable.”When asked about the Board of Control for Cricket in India, which does not adhere to WADA norms on doping, the minister said, “I am not talking about any one sport. This will be made applicable to all sports.””Mostly, the norms of various international sports bodies are in consonance with those of WADA. We expect that all such sports bodies adhere to WADA norms. But in case of a conflict, the norms of international bodies would apply.”On the action taken so far on doping within the country, the minister said, “Whatever it is, now we have asked NIS, SAI and NADA to be more vigilant. I have asked NADA to carry on more surprise checks, increase the frequency and change the dope officers and I am hopeful of positive results.”advertisement”We have already started conducting raids. Surprise checks were carried out on Saturday at NIS in Patiala and such raids are being conducted at Bangalore today. Such raids will be carried out more frequently and wherever dope material is found entering the premises, strict action will be taken.””Already, strict action has been taken against seven officials and Justice Mukul Mudgal has been appointed to carry out a thorough probe. Strict action would taken. We will spare no one.”- With PTI inputsread more

Michigan may have completely overhauled its coaching staff this offseason, but clearly, Michigan State and its fans aren’t conceding state bragging rights any time soon. Thursday night, one MSU board of trustees member made that clear.Mitch Lyons, the Vice-Chair of the Michigan State Board of Trustees, had a little fun with new Michigan tight ends coach Jay Harbaugh on Twitter. Harbaugh, clearing trying to endear himself to his new fan base, asked his followers if it was legal to own a Wolverine as a pet. Lyons responded, telling Harbaugh he should ask Coach Mark Dantonio. If you aren’t connecting the dots, he’s claiming that Dantonio owns the Wolverines.@JayHarbaugh @ryanschuiling Ask Coach D…..#GoGreen— Mitch Lyons (@mlyons85) January 23, 2015Considering Dantonio is 6-2 against Michigan in his time in East Lansing, this is an A+ troll job. Unfortunately, Harbaugh never responded, instead choosing to ignore the comment.read more

There’s been no shortage of attention on the Sacramento Kings in the wake of their mind-boggling choice to deal DeMarcus Cousins to New Orleans for pennies on the dollar. But one thing that’s garnered almost no scrutiny is the inconsistency of the team’s play.The Kings this season have lost a league-worst five games in which they once held a lead of 15 points or more, according to NBA Miner, a site that tracks advanced and unusual statistics. But they’ve also tied for an NBA-best four wins in contests that they once trailed in by 15 points or more. How are those two things even possible?Well, it helps when you’re as inconsistent as the Kings are. Sacramento is the NBA’s worst team in first halves by far yet owns the league’s 10th-best net rating1A net rating measures how many points a team outscores an opponent by — or is outscored by — for every 100 possessions. in second halves (even better than the defending-champion Cavs). Those numbers fit the pattern of what’s happened in the team’s craziest outcomes: Three of Sacramento’s four major comebacks this season began during the third quarter, while four of the Kings’ five collapses began unraveling in the second quarter.In the comebacks, the Kings often had trouble containing opposing forwards — Andrew Wiggins, Gordon Hayward, Tobias Harris and Paul Millsap, among others — in the early going. But Sacramento wisely dumped the ball into Cousins, who repeatedly drew fouls and visits to the line during second halves, which allowed his team to play catch-up with the clock stopped. This especially worked in a 94-93 win over Utah, in which Cousins shot 10 free throws in the fourth quarter without taking a single field-goal attempt.During the back-breaking losses, the slow-paced Kings have often been outrun by their opponents. In a game on Nov. 10, the Lakers outscored Sacramento 13-4 in second-half fast-break points, according to NBA.com. The Warriors outscored the Kings 21-3 in fast-break scenarios during the second half of their Jan. 8 comeback. And the Pacers finished with a 22-0 second-half advantage in fast-break scoring over the Kings en route to a come-from-behind victory on Jan. 18. (Sacramento’s 3-point defense, one of the worst in the NBA, was also less than stellar in those second-half efforts.)Cousins obviously had a ton to do with the Kings’ outcomes in these games — particularly in a 3-point loss to the Sixers in which he had 46 points but fouled out in the final minute. But the loss of Rudy Gay, out for the season, arguably had a bigger impact in some cases.Gay tore one of his Achilles tendons in the midst of one of the collapses, with the Kings up by 10 against Indiana in a Jan. 18 contest that Sacramento once led by 22. Gay’s injury took a psychological toll on the club that night, Cousins told reporters after the game. Cousins shot 0-for-9 with six turnovers after halftime.And there was a tangible difference in the team’s play. Without Gay’s ability to ease some of the scoring burden (his 26 percent usage rate was the team’s second-highest before the team remade itself at the trade deadline), Cousins was overworked in some fourth periods. His fourth-quarter usage rate jumped to 57.5 percent during the last week and a half of January, after Gay’s injury, up from 37 percent earlier in the same month. That’d be asking too much of anyone — let alone the NBA’s most double-teamed post player.Video Playerhttps://fivethirtyeight.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/cousinsnorudygay.mp400:0000:0000:16Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.Things will change considerably now that Cousins is in New Orleans. The Kings can only hope that the move allows for increased stability, and perhaps fewer blown leads, going forward.Check out our latest NBA predictions.read more